Thread regarding Cisco Systems Inc. layoffs

This lack of performance review works two ways ; it also means management can not be held accountable or be measured against set objectives.. Based on what I have seen the only metric they are judged on is how many "all hands " meetings they can hold..

hopefully you have learned the CS theory foundation

So what understanding of CS concepts can we depend on at Cisco?

• Why one shouldn't implement O(n^5) algorithms for large values of n in a path with hard real time requirements? No.

• Why one shouldn't keep inventing new instances of the halting problem in production systems? No.

• The Pigeonhole Principle? No.

• Issues with concurrency? No.

• Substitutability? No.

• What modular programming, structured programming, object oriented programming, generic programming and functional programming are and what common and unique benefits does each provide? No.

• Resource management including scheduling and fragmentation issues? No.

• Borrow carry in subtraction? No. (Technically from elementary school in the US but it's confounded enough people here with graduate degrees from highly regarded universities that I had to mention it.)

When I was young we used to joke about the 10-25% of FORTRAN hacks that couldn't make it to structured programming, and later the 40%+ that couldn't get from structured programming to object oriented programming. Having seen kids straight out of college over the past decade with nothing but Java under their belt writing code that would be considered bad FORTRAN-in-C I'm starting to think it's more a matter of basic cognitive ability. Move from CS101 Introduction to Programming skills to CS201 Introduction to Software Engineering skills and the air gets much thinner which is why SCRUM trainers publicly dream of spoon fed tasks which aren't longer than an hour (we called them on it and they said it wasn't hyperbole.)

All this confusion about the skillset annoys me a bit, do we really think an 45 years old engineer could have any problem to understand things such as GIT, Bitbucket Jenkins and companions ?

These aren't skills but things you would use at work to get things done - if this is what you learn at uni something has gone wrong, hopefully you have learned the CS theory foundation so no matter what you need to use to get things done you can pick them up as they come.

Do we really believe that an old engineer can't get the job done ? Are these SKILLS ? I am afraid the rational behind the scenes is much more money oriented and many activities performed at work aren't that complicated and a new graduate gets things done at half of the price.

I am in my thirties and I am quite happy to work with people with 20+ years of experience as you learn a lot and they don't get crazy when something "new" pops up - there is the peril of nepotism though.

Many "new" things actually seem to be a re-work of a 90's piece of software (Slack-IRC?) and I am getting frustrated working with a bunch of kids who get excited at the idea of wiriting a piece of software in Scala using actors and not even knowing how to synchronize a couple of thread : but the bitter reality is that the work to get done many times isn't that difficult and many - not everybody - can do it.

I was about to apply for a position in Cisco but having read this I am a bit buffled - I am just out from a similar situation at Citrix, I just wanted to check and BUM! Found it.

@1dul spot on write up.

Let's just say hypothetically that a member of the company's leadership were to have said at a world wide all hands many years ago "we want the average age in engineering to be 25" how do you think he could accomplish this without age discrimination?

What about even worse companies where the CEO publishes memos saying only recent graduates with no industry experience can be hired?

For those who think they can challenge this, how do you get around the fact that every significant company does background checks which including checking for lawsuits against former employers?

There isn't a methodology. VPs were given a cost target that they had to hit. If there weren't obvious things like shutting down a business, etc., then typically they'd ask each of their reports to "give them some names". Directors, as seasoned professionals, had to figure out what names to give. And often that meant looking at the problem from a variety of angles.

HR requires that layoffs be justified in 1 of two ways: A role being eliminated. Or underperformance relative to peers with an efficiency gain from the people that are left. If you were doing the same thing as other people, and their roles are still around, then the decision maker make the hard decision to separate you from the rest for some reason. The criteria by which you were 'underperforming' relative to peers is captured in a "cover their a--" spreadsheet, demonstrating that you were a lower performer than the rest. (Ratings across various criteria, which can vary by role.) Whether or not that data is manufactured, or based in truth, you'll NEVER know. The decision maker was entrusted to fill out the spreadsheet, and not a lot of questions from HR are raised as to whether or not the spreadsheet is justifiable or not.

The company is clearly trying to reduce its median age and skew toward younger workers. The amount of millennial pandering is tiresome, as a bunch of older leadership tries too hard to look cool for the kids. I want age diversity and value younger peers, but it's foolish to alienate older workers in the process of pulling in younger ones.

I find the videos on YouTube with the millennials all dancing, playing and wearing costumes at work hilarious. Really? I know companies need to keep worker morale up, but taking the time to make videos of people playing and dancing does nothing to improve the bottom line. Hey, come work here where you can play all day. Is that really the image Cisco wants to show? Playing is fun, but it should be after hours.

I recently resigned from Cisco in large part because of the layoffs and how they are being handed out. The company is clearly trying to reduce its median age and skew toward younger workers. The amount of millennial pandering is tiresome, as a bunch of older leadership tries too hard to look cool for the kids. I want age diversity and value younger peers, but it's foolish to alienate older workers in the process of pulling in younger ones. Most importantly, when it comes to the layoffs the burden is on older workers. In my own department all those let go were older. The Monday after the cuts were handed out, my boss asked me to interview for the two slots just opened upfor "more junior level" people to join our team. How convenient. Literally trading in a 50 for two 25s. Maybe you can fool the EEOC with that crap, Cisco, but not me.

Guys if you're not taking them to court the best way to get the word out about what's going on is to write a review on Glassdoor.com. People really read these before joining an organisation, and if you want others to avoid the trap you had, go and make the fully aware of the reality.

I guess I'll never know (frankly I believe age/salary were determining factors).

I too was told it was not performance related. In my BU's case, the majority of us were either higher pay grades or making above the median for our pay grade. Also, the majority--and I don't mean 51% either--were above 40. More that 75% were over 45 and more than 60% were 50 and older. So, yes, age/salary were the determining factors. To two ways about it. But Cisco has good enough lawyers to review the numbers to make sure they can defend it by ensuring there's a couple of token young folks included.

I read recently that a person got the mediation clause tossed out and it suing Cisco for age discrimination. My case wasn't as blatant as theirs, so I have nothing to use as evidence so I took the "hush" money and walked away. I may not like the fact that Cisco is doing annual purges and that I finally got caught by it instead of the bottom 5%, but I have to say that at least Cisco pays well when you get kicked to the curb. Some companies only give 2 weeks pay in lieu of notice, provide an additional 2 weeks if you sign the agreement not to sue, and they might give an extra week per year of service if you're lucky, so I'll gladly take 5 months pay plus 5 months COBRA premiums over a measly 4 weeks plus 1 week per year and no COBRA premium.

I don't necessarily agree that being at Cisco means your skills are behind the times. IT was keeping up with new technology. All the young, straight-out-of-college engineers were demanding GitHub and Cisco finally brought it in. Engineering is using current versions of Jenkins, GitHub, Jira, Bitbucket & Confluence. These are all products that I'm using at my new job so my skills seem to be pretty current with what's on the market today.

But, yes, there's a lot of old-school stuff at Cisco too. Too many processes were built around products that died and didn't keep up with the times or technology.

I don't mean to be cold but wondering why you got laid off is not a good use of time and effort. The value to be found in examining the past is in doing postmortems on what worked and what didn't work and find ways to better address what didn't work going forward.

Looking forward, keep building new skills. You just left Legacy Land so you may have skills well beyond your peers at Cisco but you can still be well behind kids straight out of college who get picked up by the companies that leverage the most modern skill sets. Job jumps aren't just about money, they are also about staying relevant so use them as such.

Avaya declares bankruptcy

Seems like some of my typing did not make it to the screen...

...Cisco Binges. Cisco's growth strategy is growth by acquisition. They buy multiple companies throughout the year and at years end they purge. Typically the purge would impact duplicate roles/functions. That logic seemed to not function with the layoff of 2014 (when simultaneously John Chambers got a ~$11M raise--Merry Christmas)

...any organism that feeds must purge. Manage your career accordingly